|
Wi-Fi signal blocked
By Shelia Watson
Contributing Writer
After two years of a start-and-stop course of action, the citywide Wi-Fi project has stalled, with the city terminating its contract with Widespread Access, the primary vendor. In light of similar municipal Wi-Fi projects across the nation being scuttled, the question of Internet access covering the Charleston peninsula may not be “When?” but “Why?”
The Charleston Digital Corridor, which has been leading the Wi-Fi project, had announced the project’s kickoff in September 2005. Widespread Access had partnered with The Evening Post Publishing Co. to provide the access. Sam Staley, president of Widespread Access, said the main revenue streams were advertising and subscriptions for upgraded service.
According to published reports, the Evening Post Publishing Co., which had invested about $200,000 in the project in exchange for the right to develop the online pages, has cut ties to the project.
Charleston is not the only area to encounter difficulties with a municipal Wi-Fi project. Cincinnati, Houston, St. Louis, San Francisco and Chicago are among the cities scrapping plans to blanket their areas with low-cost or free Wi-Fi, with most of them citing either high costs or complex technologies or both. Even Silicon Valley, an area synonymous with high-tech entrepreneurship, considered its plan for free Wi-Fi too risky.
Closer to home, Columbia, S.C., recently pulled the plug on its regional Wi-Fi initiative. Jim Gambrell, director of economic development for the city of Columbia, said the main culprit was fast-moving technology.
“It wasn’t so much the money, which was fairly nominal, but the fact that anything we put up would be obsolete soon,” Gambrell said. “And with so many hot spots provided by the private sector, the project became less and less important.”
As for the Charleston municipal Wi-Fi, Ernest Andrade, the corridor’s executive director, pointed to “technical challenges” as the reason for the project’s delay and the termination of the contract with Widespread Access.
“Basically there are a couple of issues,” said Andrade. “There are some things on the practical side that haven’t panned out. Some of the technology has advanced, and the hardware was not branded merchandise, so if it failed there was no guarantee. In fact, one hardware vendor already went out of business. There were promises made by the vendors that don’t match up in the field. These are serious issues we have to consider beforehand.”
Widespread Access had encountered difficulties of its own.
“What we had engineered and designed had all the approvals, and then we had a major setback when the city’s Board of Architectural Review became concerned about the aesthetics,” said Staley, the company president. “It was confusing because the equipment (mostly antennae and transmitters) was very small and very hidden. That’s why they were approved in the first place.
“They had already approved them but changed their minds. That was a major setback because we had to stop, rebuild and redesign the infrastructure plan based on something different.”
The difficulties with Columbia’s project were also technical in nature.
“We felt like we were at the end of the Wi-Fi era and getting into the Wi-MAX era,” the latest technology for wireless connection, Gambrell said. “A year or two ago, Wi-Fi was the glitzy thing to do, and it meant a lot of publicity for the city, building an image that said your city was on the leading edge. There was a mindset that we were out there and doing these things, but it just doesn’t seem to be that important anymore for municipal Wi-Fi to be a part of that image.”
One connection point, Gambrell said, will be maintained in the Vista area of the city, but only because it was the pilot project site.
“We’ll keep that one running, and we’re providing Internet access at the libraries and park areas, but other than that, we have an underlying principle that we want wherever possible for the private sector to take on providing Wi-Fi,” he said. “There are just too many other areas where it’s already available, like restaurants and coffee shops and the airport, for us to spend time or money trying to do this, even though money really wasn’t the biggest issue.”
Gambrell said the total cost to implement was expected to be “less than $100,000” with a yearly maintenance and service cost of about $50,000.
“We could have handled that investment,” he said. “But then, we’d have to keep the antennas up and working and keep updating the home page where you log in and things like that, and it’s just not worth it,” he said.
Andrade said cost was not the primary factor for the Charleston project, noting that “our system comes at no cost to the city.”
However, cost was definitely a factor to Staley, who said his team had spent “a lot of money to get (the project) implemented.”
In the meantime, Andrade said the project’s objectives have not changed. He currently is in discussion with several vendors, one of whom he hopes will step in to take Widespread Access’ place.
“We need a vendor with the technical know-how,” he said. “We know this is not pure science and that there are a lot of variables. But it needs to be done the way we want it done. We have the data to support the need, and the data continues to roll in. Our role is to facilitate it, and we’re confident we’ll see this project through. It’s our culture to persevere.”
|
E-Mail This Article
Printer-Friendly Version